kratisto
by irnan
Summary: Collection of ficlets about Anakin Skywalker.
1. kratisto

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN: **__Childbirth, slavery and implied child prostitution in this one. "to kratisto", to the strongest, was reportedly what Alexander the Great replied when asked whom his Empire should go to after his death._

**kratisto**

Anakin Skywalker is born in a battle, and nine years later his mother will wonder if maybe that was a sign in and of itself: the darkened hold of the slave transport, the smell of sweat and blood and human waste, the sound of the blasters that almost drowned out her own cries of pain. She fights her own battle that day, a fight within a fight for his life as the Tusken raid draws on and the slaves sob in fear or sit, silent, unmoving, too dead inside to care if they reach Gardulla or are torn apart by the Sand People.

Shmi swaddles him as best she can in cloth torn from her own skirt. She'd birthed him on the filthy floor, and the dirt cakes his limbs and clings to him – as does her blood. Slaves are not permitted weapons, but she reaches through the bars and is able to take a knife off a dead guard for long enough to cut her son's umbilical cord before his colleagues arrive, the Tuskens slaughtered or driven off.

The guards wrench him away from her when they reach their destination, forcing her to stumble on her weak, shaking legs into the presence of her new master. They carry Anakin as carelessly as if he were a stuffed rag doll.

Shmi has no strength to be angry anymore.

Gardulla is at least pleased her child is a boy. This particular Hutt has little use for girls, for the market niche she has carved out for herself caters to other tastes.

"You'd best hope he grows up pretty!"

Shmi wonders if she should hope he grows up at all, with _that_ in his future. Then she silently berates herself for the thought. _Where there's life there's hope_, someone told her once, and she isn't sure she agrees about hope but she does know about the little things: sunrises, the occasional bath, having enough to eat, a moment of laughter shared with a friend.

Even slaves have those moments. So, too, will her little boy. She holds him close in the darkness of their new quarters, struggling to stay awake while he nurses at her breast, and whenever her eyelids fall she thinks she can see him, little flashes of his life: a laughing boy, a fierce young man.

He will not look like her, she thinks distantly. He will not have her coarse black hair, her nose, her jaw, her dark, solemn eyes.

Anakin will have hair the colour of the sand dunes he was born among and eyes like the desert sky Shmi glimpsed through the bars above her head as he slipped from her body and began to cry.

Anakin will look like a Skywalker.


	2. keeper of chaos

_this is a disclaimer._

**keeper of chaos**

With every report that comes in, every victory celebrated, Palpatine permits himself to feel every more triumphant. The boy is brilliant; there is no other word for it. His eye for the weakness of others is sharp and shrewd, his instincts flawless. He does not fight like a Jedi, waiting for the will of the Force to show him his path, but like a Sith, seeing the opportunities presented to him by the incompetence of his enemies and acting on them as swiftly as a striking snake. Give him control of a battle, and he will find a way to win it, no matter how.

They call him the Hero With No Fear, and Palpatine thinks it doubly ironic, for Anakin Skywalker is full of fear – just not for himself, and he recognises the fears of everyone around him – except his own.

Perfect, yes: perfectly flawed, in all the right ways.

Palpatine picks up another report, smiling to himself as he reads the boy's detached, terse sentences, and finds himself wondering, suddenly, if this emotion he feels is the same pride that Kenobi holds for Anakin Skywalker.


	3. said and done

_this is a disclaimer._

**said and done**

Ahsoka doesn't cry when they reassign her.

She might want to, but she doesn't. She's a Jedi. Jedi don't cry. They don't get attached. They don't stoop to begging Master Yoda himself to rescind the order, _just this once, please, Master, let me stay, but this... attachment... cannot be permitted to continue, Mace Windu was saying over the commlink when Ahsoka arrived at the briefing room and he said "attachment" in a quiet way that made his disgust with the concept perfectly clear. It is the decree of this Council that Padawan Tano be assigned to Master Unduli, who will teach her as befits a member of this Order, and that Padawan Tano and Knight Skywalker are to be permitted no further contact with one another for the duration of the Padawan's apprenticeship and perhaps beyond that._

This is the last time they will ever see each other.

After this conversation, Ahsoka will forever associate turbolifts with goodbyes.

She feels lonely already, small and unprotected.

Anakin kneels in front of her so that he is looking up into her face, and she wants to see his wide, tilted grin again before she goes but she won't and she knows it.

"I'm not much of a Master, Ahsoka," he says. "I'm too reckless, or so Obi-Wan still claims, and too judgmental, and I'm a terrible teacher. Master Luminara can show you all the things I can't."

"Master Luminara," Ahsoka says, loud and clear, "doesn't understand."

Anakin's mouth thins. "No."

"Can't you –"

"Don't you think I haven't tried?" he barks.

She shakes her head no, because she never did think that. She knows him better than to think that.

"What would you have taught me?" she asks.

For a moment, he looks... no, not taken aback. Hurt. Grieving, almost. His blue eyes lock onto a point somewhere above and behind her shoulder and stay there, staring into the past.

"Nothing a Jedi should know," Anakin says at last. His voice is rough and low, he swallows hard after speaking, his right hand flexes, once twice, then lies still against his thigh.

Ahsoka, for the first time that she can remember, reaches out to touch him. His skin is cooler than hers, his cheek scratchy with stubble. Anakin meets her eyes, startled.

"Goodbye, Sky Guy," Ahsoka says.

He stands up and kisses her forehead. "Goodbye, Snips."

Master Luminara is waiting in the hangar bay. Ahsoka takes a few steps towards her, back straight, shoulders squared, and then spins around.

Anakin is still standing in the turbolift, arms crossed over his chest. Ahsoka feels a sudden urge to run to him and be hugged, wrapped up in his arms like she's seen parents and children, brothers and sisters do for one another on dozens of worlds in the wake of a battle.

But they are Jedi, and Jedi don't hug.

"You're the best teacher I've ever had," she blurts out, and watches his blue eyes widen and his mouth stretch into that wide, tilted grin.


	4. unlikely ways

_this is a disclaimer._

**unlikely ways**

These are the things Anakin Skywalker should believe in: the Order. The Code. The Force.

The Order is all the family a Jedi has or needs, a group of people bound together, paradoxically, by their rejection of attachment, of family, of home; and yet they are family, and they are home to one another, and this inevitable hypocrisy is only the smallest of all the lies they tell themselves without ever realising it.

The Code is the touchstone of the Jedi Order, the sacred precepts by which they live. It shows them the path to understanding the Force, teaches them the tools they need in order to hear, not just listen to, its will, and plainly the Code teaches the only right way of listening, because it has not lead them wrong in a thousand years.

A Jedi's power flows from the Force: if he doesn't trust in it, he doesn't have anything.

*

These are the things Anakin Skywalker could have believed in, once: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Padmé Amidala. The Republic.

_Dreams pass in time_, Obi-Wan told him, meaning it as both advice and comfort.

(Anakin never makes the same mistake twice.)

"... you believe this bill Palpatine is trying to push through the Senate? He's demanding all kinds of powers over the employees of the Republic administration even at the lowest planetary levels – unprecedented access to their personal files, the unrestricted right to terminate their jobs... it's a part of that plan of his to restructure the regional administration, make it more hierarchical. These Governors of his have only been in place for a year or so and he already wants to give them powers to override local governments!"

"Only on issues relating directly to the war," Anakin said absently. "Most of the Regional Governors do have excellent military backgrounds, you know. Which is more than can be said for, oh, the Queen of Naboo?"

Padmé glared at him. "He's instituting the beginning of a dictatorship – of enslaving the local systems to the Regional Governors –"

The realisation of what she'd said hit her an instant too late.

Anakin put his cutlery down with a clatter. It was several silent minutes before he could bring himself to look at her, to attempt a smile and change the subject.

(He will never understand how his beloved can be so intelligent and yet so ignorant at the same time.)

_The Republic doesn't exist out here_, Mom said, and Anakin could almost see the manacles around her wrists.

(The idea that she held on to life for so long – that she endured that torment for so long – in order to see him again is the thing that hurts the most.)

*

These are the things Anakin Skywalker does believe in, now: himself. And the Force.

Nothing else here will save him. The mud is too deep and the wind is too strong and the battle droids are too numerous.

Everything else is too far away.


	5. that i confess

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** Vaguely implied child abuse (not by Obi-Wan! Jeez.)_

**that i confess (i must have loved you) **

Master Obi-Wan, it turns out, is more than a little untidy.

Anakin finds it funny in the privacy of his own head – both kinds of funny, the funny ha-ha kind and the funny weird kind, because Master Obi-Wan doesn't exactly come across as the kind of person who'd be untidy, like Watto did. He comes across as the kind of person who'd colour-code things, like Wald's Master, and if you ever put a tool away in the wrong place, you'd better hope there's a friend close to help you home.

But Master Obi-Wan leaves things lying around a lot, and he never seems able to find whatever it is he's working on, and he's one of those people who's interested in everything, so he's always working on at least six different things at once. Anakin has a Kessel of a time straightening everything out and keeping track of what datapad is lying under which pile of cushions, but he manages. Mom would be proud.

Still, his standards slip a little, he lets his guard down without meaning to, and one day he breaks a plate. It's wet and slippery from the soapy water in the sink, and it was Anakin's fault for standing there like an idiot and taking forever to do the dishes like he always does because it's so awesome to get to put his hands in so much water just to do the dishes, and somehow he let the plate fall.

Would have served him right if it had landed on his toes. He winces, bites his bottom lip. Master Obi-Wan has jumped up and come to the kitchen door, and Anakin can't look at him (it's better if you don't see the blow coming cause then you're less afraid, and if they know you're afraid they hurt you more the second time).

"I'm sorry," he says, bending down. "It'll never happen again, Master –"

"Don't move!" Master Obi-Wan barks at him, crossing the little kitchen in two quick strides. "Stay still, Anakin. Why aren't you wearing your boots?"

He hunkers down by Anakin's feet and actually starts picking up the pieces himself, piling them in his left hand gently while the fingertips of his right ghost over the floor, searching for tiny shards.

Anakin stares. "I."

"Hmm?" Master Obi-Wan looks up at him, eyebrow raised. His eyes are grey, and very calm. Seek used to say that the calm ones were the worst, but then again, Seek used to say Anakin would never leave Tatooine, either.

"You should only wear boots if you need them. Or they wear out."

"Well, you need them now," Master Obi-Wan says. "What if you'd taken a step and cut your foot on a shard?"

Anakin has no idea what to say to that. If he agrees, he'll be selfish, thinking only of himself and not of his Master. If he doesn't, he'll be damaging himself.

"Wear your boots, Padawan. That's what they're for."

Anakin nods dumbly. Master Obi-Wan nods as well, and stands up.

"Off you go then. Watch your step."

"Master, the dishes aren't dried..."

Master Obi-Wan gives him a strange look. "I do remember how to use a towel, Padawan," he says dryly.

Anakin blinks, confused beyond words, but he nods just the same.

It's never wise to press your luck too far with Masters.


	6. canonization

_this is a disclaimer._

**canonization**

It's the middle of the night when she finally reaches the lake house, and the first thing she does is run upstairs to their bedroom – _let him still be here let us have more time don't let him have thought I couldn't make it –_

He's stretched out in their bed, shirtless, bootless, fast asleep, vulnerable as only she has ever seen him.

Padmé stops in the doorway to just admire for a few minutes. The cut of his hipbones (has he been eating enough?), the deep hollows under his eyes, the messy hair (could do with a trim), the shadowing of a new scar across his right shoulder, goosebumps rising on his flesh (_why_ did he leave the window open?).

He's absolutely beautiful, and he's _hers_.

Every time she thinks about that, she gets a smug little tremor in her stomach.

She undresses as silently as she can, peeling off layer after layer of Senator Amidala and letting the poor woman lie in a crumpled heap on the floor until there's nothing left but Padmé, bending over her husband's sleeping form in a thin shift, drawing the pins out of her hair and putting them gently down on the bedside table. Anakin murmurs something in his sleep, shifts a little, eyelids fluttering. His left hand clenches in the sheets, and suddenly she's not so sure he's having pleasant dreams anymore.

Padmé reaches out to wake him, hand hovering over his shoulder, and freezes, remembering her father's stories about the veterans of the Chefell conflict twenty years ago, how it was never a good idea to sneak up on them, to wake them unexpectedly –

Oh, ridiculous. This is Anakin. He'd die before he hurt her, even unintentionally.

She gives herself a shake and looks down at Anakin again, fully intending to draw him out of his dreams (good or bad) with a touch and a kiss, but he's already awake, gazing up at her with a slightly befuddled look that's just adorable.

Padmé grins. "Are you an angel?"

His eyes clear at last, and he grins back, crooked and lazy. She realises he's probably got an excellent view down the front of her shift, and bites down on her bottom lip, heat and tension coiling in her stomach.

Anakin has never made a secret of how much he likes to look at her.

"What?"

"An angel," she explains. "I've heard the deep space pilots talk about them. They're the most beautiful creatures in the universe. They live on the moon of Iego, I think."

He's trying not to laugh now. "You're a funny little girl."

"Little girl?" Padmé says, and swings a leg over his thighs. "That's a little creepy, considering what I have in mind for you for the rest of the weekend."

Anakin wraps his hands around her hips and arches his shoulders off the bed a little, getting more comfortable. "Try the next two weeks, my love."

"Two weeks?" disbelievingly.

He nods, eyes sparkling.

Padmé laughs triumphantly and sweeps down to kiss him.


	7. better place to play

_this is a disclaimer._

**better place to play**

"If you mean to become a Jedi, there are certain things you have to do away with," Master Obi-Wan says, and touches Anakin's forehead with his finger. "In here. Attachments. Certain attitudes. Ways of thinking. The others don't need to be told this, but you do. You have to unlearn what you've learned so far in your life, Padawan."

He tries. He really does. He says all the right things and he does the meditations and he nods at the Masters and goes on missions and squashes every thought of his mother to the point where he can barely remember what she looks like some days because he wants to be a Jedi, and he needs to be a Jedi. A Jedi will be able to free Mom; a Jedi can do good in the galaxy. There are three things Anakin could do with his life, and three only, but only one of them will do anyone, anywhere, any good.

After all, whoever heard of a podracer pilot helping people, let alone a slave?

So Anakin tries, and listens, and unlearns:

The taste of his mother's cooking.

The sound a podracer engine makes when it fires up perfectly, raring to go.

The touch of the cool filthy floor under his cheek, concentrating on it to the point where he can't see anything else because it hurts too much to get up and better the irritation of the sand in his mouth and eyes than another blow.

The sight of the desert, endless, wide-open cage of a place, false-promise-making and treacherous.

The smell of poverty, rank and strangely wet even when sunk so far in the sand dunes it's impossible to climb out, engine oil and unwashed bodies, tangy undercurrent of blood, sentient waste and sentient misery.

He unlearns the language of the Magh'ran, and how to tie a _prosei _to keep the sand out of his nose and mouth. He unlearns the call of a krayt dragon and the tracks of a bantha and the weight of the _seifa _that Feisal's father once let them hold and the stories he had told them of the battles it had seen and the men it had killed. He unlearns the whisper on the wind that is a sandstorm brewing in the distance and the dark smudge of it on the horizon. He unlearns the stories of the desert and the way the spacers would shift and look nervous when they heard of the city of Kyrithra and the eyes in the canyons of the Jundland Wastes. He unlearns how to bargain with Jawas and how to stare down a Dug and a thousand other things that no one desert-born should ever be foolish enough to forget, but Anakin does, because he needs to be a Jedi now, and there is no room in the Order for those who are both.

Anakin unlearns, in fact, so successfully that it takes him three weeks and more of nightmares before he decides that enough is enough and goes to Tatooine to search for his mother, and even then he carries with him the knowledge that if Master Obi-Wan had been there when he made the decision, he would not have done it.

It burns, that knowledge, after she dies. It burns to know that all his unlearning has been for nought, and all his trying will never become success, and most of all it burns that the Jedi are impotent fools and he still would have let them stop him had they been there just because they are _Jedi_.

He's unlearned so much for them, but it never once crossed their minds that perhaps some of the things he threw away at their behest might have had some value of their own.

But when Padmé kisses him, when she says _I love you_, when they marry in secret, when she lets her veil slide away and turns her back, hands holding up that mass of curls so that he can reach the lacings of her gown, Anakin finds that _unlearnt_ does not necessarily mean _lost_.

The other half of what he threw away comes back to him during the war: the press of other people's misery against his mind, heavier now than before because he understands what's happening and he knows how to control it, the darkness and the bad food and the constant pain that's no excuse for not doing your job, and step by step these things become familiar to him again, the horror and the refuge side by side.

It's like he never left home in the first place.


	8. far fairer world encompassing

_this is a disclaimer._

**far fairer world encompassing**

Padmé Amidala allowed herself few personal luxuries in her life. Aside from the opulence expected of a Galactic Senator, there was a monthly massage at one of the most well-known spas on Coruscant, and her husband; that was all.

It was about to change.

She was standing in the living room of her penthouse, looking down at the low table in front of her, which was piled high with sweets. The late evening sunshine was falling across it, striking interesting glints from the wrappers and making her wonder if she should be worried any of the contents were going to melt.

Well, if they did, she'd get more. The question was, which one did she want? Rock, chocolate, caramel, crystallized fruits, half a dozen more exotic sweets from across the galaxy. The selection was worthy of the most exclusive Coruscant confectionery (and had, in fact, been collected there), but she couldn't see any that took her fancy.

"Decisions, decisions," she said to herself, stroking her belly. "What do you think, little one?"

The baby didn't answer - not even the tiniest shift that could be construed as a reply.

Padmé sighed. "I'm disappointed in you, Luke," she informed her son. "After all, it's your fault I'm having cravings. The least you could do is let me know what you're making me have cravings _for_."

Still nothing. Then, behind her, there was a soft footfall; Padmé turned into her husband's arms with a cry of delight.

"Ani, you're here- _hmmm_."

"Sorry," Anakin said when they drew apart. "It was either kiss you now or go crazy. Every time I've stopped today all my thoughts go straight to you. It's been most... distracting."

"Serves you right," Padmé said contentedly. "I spent all morning absolutely dying of _frustration _that you weren't here. Apparently pregnancy hormones dump my mind in the gutter."

Something predatory sparked in his blue eyes; his hands slid from her shoulders down her back to her hips and tugged her gently closer. "I can still do something about that."

"The gutter?" she whispered against his lips.

"The pregnancy hormones."

"They're your fault in the first place," she mumured as his mouth ghosted over her jaw, as his nose nudged her head back and his lips began to move down her neck.

He grinned against her pulse point. "Not five minutes ago you were blaming it on the baby," he said. "By the way, would you please stop calling my daughter _Luke_?"

"When you stop addressing your son as _Leia_," Padmé giggled. "Don't think I didn't hear you saying goodbye to my stomach yesterday." Anakin bit at her chin in retaliation and then kissed her deeply again, one arm coming up behind her shoulders.

"I can't wait for the look on your face when it turns out I'm right."

She laughed at him, tucking her head under his chin and breathing in the leather-ozone-mint-musk smell of him: clean and warm and entirely hers.

"Which sweetshop did you buy, anyway?"

"Oh, a couple," she said evasively. If she told him she'd got Dormé to go to Forn'ja's for her, he'd get that pinched look of his and change the subject. In his opinion, food just shouldn't be that expensive.

"And what for?"

Padmé sighed. "I was having cravings," she said. "But by the time the sweets actually got here, I found I had no idea what I actually wanted anymore."

Anakin eyed the miniature sweetshop on the table with a thoughtful look. "Be a shame to let them go to was- ohhh, you've got Kyrithian sweetmeats?" He let her go and made a drive for the table, coming up with a brown flimsi bag twisted elaborately and tied with short thin ribbons.

"Kyrithian sweetmeats?" Padmé repeated.

He nodded. "Yeah, they're a sweet from a town back home, Kyrithra. Mostly a kind of caramel, I think - cheap, but not even my Mom knew the recipe. You can get them everywhere on Tatooine, but they're expensive to store for more than a couple weeks, and there's the Hutts and their 'taxes' to think of, so you don't often see them out here. Seems that's all it takes for you Coreworlders to declare something a planetary speciality," he added with a laugh.

"Kyrithian sweetmeats," Padmé repeated, taking the bag off him and ripping it open. Sugar-frosted cubes fell out onto her palm in various shades of brown and cream; Anakin picked one up and sucked it with a blissful smile.

"Mmmmh. Delicious."

Padmé nibbled at hers, curious, and then her eyes widened. "Oh, wow." Sweet but tangy, soft and sticky and chewy - Anakin was right, they were delicious. "Don't go anywhere, just let me order a refrigerator full."

"Refrigerator!" Anakin looked horrified. "No, no, no, no, no. You keep them in the shade, sure, but they're best warm and half-melted, so that you have to lick half the sweet off your fingers before you've got it out of the wrapping."

Padmé laughed at him. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"You really love these."

"They're my favourites."

She twitched the packet in her hand a little, glanced down at it. Sure enough, the price tag was horrendous.

She didn't remember these from their time on Tatooine when Shmi had died, so there was a good chance he hadn't had any since he was a child.

Padmé nodded. "All right then. Pick a good corner in the kitchen. From now on, we have Kyrithian sweetmeats in the house."

Anakin laughed and kissed her once more, rather stickily, and when he made to draw away she brought her hand up and pressed another sweetmeat to his lips. He drew it into his mouth, kissing her fingertips as he did so, and she pushed him firmly back onto the couch and settled into his lap so she could feed him the rest of the bag, fingers wet with his saliva and coated in sugar. Piece by piece, Padmé watched him wrap those full lips around the sweets, chew and swallow, her knuckles brushing against his jaw. His eyes were fixed on her, dark and intense, making her shiver: excitement, anticipation.

There were dark hollows underneath them and lines of tension at their corners, she realised suddenly, with a chill that had nothing to do with sweetmeats or the look in his eyes.

But she doubted there was anything she could do to smooth them away that she wasn't already: love him, and take care of him, and find a way to give him all the little things in life that were good, and that he'd spent so long without.

Like Kyrithian sweetmeats.

"What about your cravings?" Anakin asked huskily, hands spanning her hips, the small of her back.

She leaned forwards and licked the taste of his favourite sweets from his lips, bumped her nose against his gently. "I like seeing you happy more."

"Well, there's a quandary. I like seeing you happy."

"Seeing you happy makes me happy."

"Don't complicate this unneccessarily," he teased, breath warm on her cheek, smelling of sugar and sunlight and home and happiness.

Padmé slid her sugar-free left hand into his hair and leaned forward to kiss his chin and blaze a trail from there to his left ear. "Take me to bed, Anakin," she whispered. "Make love with me. Is that... uncomplicated... enough?"

Anakin sighed, mock-suffering. "You do make the most unreasonable demands of me, milady," he said, sliding an arm under her knees and lifting her easily as he stood up.

He'd lift their child with the same thoughtless grace, she thought as he carried her into their bedroom.

Not long now.


	9. allasso

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** allasso is Greek for 'to change/mutate'.  
_

**allasso**

Treachery is the way of the Sith, but Vader (has broken too many of his promises to ones who meant more to him than Sidious) has no interest in overthrowing the Emperor. Power for power's sake holds no fascination for him – much to the disappointment of the Emperor, of course, who grasps for more of it with every breath he takes, both in the Force and the physical world. He opens himself ever further to the Dark Side and uses it to gain control of men's minds, to centralise power in the Empire and subjugate those who try to resist.

But the more Sidious surrounds himself with the power of the Dark, the more it rules him, blotting out the human qualities that once helped him become what he is.

Vader notes every opportunity to strike him down and take his place dispassionately: the opening is there, but he knows he has not the power to make something of it. Sidious is sunk so deeply in the Dark Side by now that Vader wonders sometimes if the man is even capable of dying, or if he is so much less than human now that he cannot truly be said to be alive anymore. If Sidious has, in a way, _become_ the Dark Side.

Healed and whole, Vader might well have done it. Trapped like this, twisted, ruined – no.

Sometimes he still manages to blame Kenobi for that. More often, he cannot find it, the all-consuming hatred, the anger he once held for the man who had the gall to call him _brother_ while leaving him to die.

He senses their secrets, Kenobi's and Sidious', bound together like a web woven around him in the Force; it would not take much effort on his part to reach out and rip them away, fragile as gossamer, to reveal the truth beyond. But there is a weariness in thinking of Kenobi, much like the detachment in his observation of Sidious' increasing insanity, and the Lord Vader is – not content, never at peace – but perhaps comfortable, leaving matters as they are.

Change, for him, has never brought anything less than disaster. Vader has no objection to upholding the status quo for a while longer.


	10. skopos

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** skopos is the Greek word for 'purpose/objective'.  
_

**skopos**

It is pathetic, really, proof of how far the man has fallen, that he cannot see why Vader has just saved his life. Twenty years ago he would have understood instantly. Twenty years ago, he would not have provoked the boy so far in the first place.

Twenty years ago he knew better than to push too far too fast, to bring all the weight of his powers down on the boy the way he's doing now. Twenty years ago he would have stepped back and waited for the war to wear him down, for others to do his work for him, waited to drip poison into the boy's mind little by little, gain his trust, prove himself worthy of loyalty. He did a better job with that girl Jade than he's doing here.

Not that Vader minds.

Better that Luke kill him in the heat of battle than in cold blood. Better the Emperor die the way Maul did than Dooku; it's too soon for that. One murder does not a Sith Lord make. Vader should know. Guilt and horror at his own deeds will drive Luke even further away from him, temporarily at least. The boy still feels too much, still cherishes too many ideals.

But then Luke dodges him and collapses his blade and refuses to fight and his calm as he does so is the only thing about him still reminiscent of Obi-Wan and Vader finds himself wondering –

Why _did_ he stop the boy from killing Palpatine?


	11. but we make our own mistakes

_this is a disclaimer._

**but we make our own mistakes**

The first time Anakin comes home with that scar over his eye, he tells her he got it slipping in the shower.

Ridiculously, Padmé almost finds herself believing him. It's that grin of his, that easy open laugh, the twinkle in his eyes. He's a very good storyteller.

Oh, not a good liar. No. Anakin can't tell a lie to save his life. There's a streak of straightforward honesty in him a mile wide, and nothing can summon up that ferocious glare of his faster than listening to her planning a campaign to pass a new Bill in the Senate. (She can't help being sneaky. It's a job requirement, just like he's required to be good with a lightsabre.)

But Anakin likes to tell stories, differentiating between the two in a strangely subtle way Padmé can't quite follow, if she's honest with herself. Perhaps it's telling that he most enjoys telling stories about himself and Obi-Wan and their daring exploits: exciting stories, wild ones, crazy ones. Aggressive negotiations and thrilling dogfights in space. Perhaps it's not lying if both storyteller and listener are aware that it didn't really happen, or at the very least didn't really happen like _that_.

She asks him about it one night in bed, propped against his chest with his arms around her waist and her legs wrapped artfully around his right one. No sign whatsoever that she might be a bit heavy for him.

"I like telling stories," he says. "They're important, you know. It's how you learn."

She giggles. "Learn how to slip in the shower?"

He sniffs. "Learn why it's important not to."

"I like that scar, actually. It makes you look very dashing."

Padmé says it without thinking, and then bites her lip, horrified, wishing she could take it back. _Liking _a _scar _- you stupid girl, who knows how he really came by it -

It's not tension exactly; just a kind of pause, as if he's evaluating her words.

Then his breath ghosts along her cheek in a soft laugh. "I'm glad you approve, milady."

She relaxes again. "There's a whole genre of Naboo literature devoted to heroes like you," she says. "Tall, handsome, mysterious, fetchingly scarred, long dark cloaks and deadly blades..."

Anakin snorts. "Romance novels."

"Not just! The inspiration came from a novel written -"

"Novels," he interrupts, "are not _stories_."

Then he yawns, making her smile. "You're tired."

"Been a busy week," he says, and now his words are a bit slurred, sleep creeping up on him.

Actually, sleep's probably _rushing _him. He's only been home with her for six hours, and they've spent a not inconsiderable part of that time engaged in some quite strenuous, if thoroughly enjoyable (not to say downright ecstatic) activities.

She shifts her weight a bit, meaning to roll aside and let him sleep. He shifts too, sliding down the bed and spilling her onto the mattress next to him, curving around her so that they're spooning instead of her lying on top of him. They'll probably roll away from each other in the night and wake up at opposite sides of the bed, but it's lovely to fall asleep like this, and it's even lovelier to open her eyes in the morning and crawl back to his arms, knowing when she gets there she'll be greeted with a kiss and more.

Her fingers run across the warmed metal of his right hand, thin and light but strong as transparisteel, and all this talk of scars and stories makes her mind wander to a meadow on Naboo where he first started telling her the stories he loves.

"Didn't you have a scar here?" she asks, sleepy herself all of a sudden.

Anakin shifts. "Yeah - when I was a kid a pirate pinned my hand to the counter" - yawn again, bigger than the last - "pinned my hand to the counter in the shop with a knife when Watto wouldn't deal with him."

Sigh. Silence. Slow steady breathing. Padmé thinks he's slipped into sleep.

She feels like she's been hit. Pinned his hand - as a _child_, pinned his _hand _-

Oh, really. What about those scars across his back, those three thin white lines near-invisible except in sunlight and under close scrutiny? He's got six different stories of how they came about, each more fantastical than the last.

Still, this one was different - Watto's never featured in his stories before...

There's a first time for everything, Padmé tells herself firmly. She'll wake up tomorrow and crawl back into his arms and make love to him until long past breakfast time, and then she'll ask again, and Anakin'll probably tell her a circus knife-thrower pinned his hand to a wall when he and Obi-Wan came to arrest him.

Or something.

Pinned his hand to the counter.

The uneasiness follows her into sleep, but in the morning she forgets it, and the scar she meant to ask about.


End file.
